February 2411 a.m.

I sit hidden from the bright burning sun. I sit
unhidden from the dark burning question. This is the
question: Did I make it worse for her? When I left her alone
at that blue line metro station last night, standing, alone,
desperation in her eyes, I felt the ambiguity of my act.
Making my way back to my Mexico City hotel room then, dizzy
still from our encounter, its surprise, its intensity, I
suffered the sharpest prick of doubt. This morning I rose to
suffer it again, that doubt, that ambiguity, that question.
From a short troubled sleep, I rose to it. Unrefreshed and
haunted, I rose. And to leave Mexico City. But follow me,
it did--that ambiguity, that doubt, that question. To
Querétaro it followed me, through the business of
resettlement, to this pedestrian lane, to this sidewalk cafe,
to this small round table under this wicker awning. I will
tell of it now. For like a poignant dream it hangs, there,
over, around me--a specter, a ghost--that doubt, that
ambiguity, that question: Did I make it worse for her?

Well-dressed. A small woman. Jet black hair. Her
features were pleasant, but not pretty. She approached
middle age with a modest build, with a well-attended build.
She seemed the businesswoman, the bureaucrat. A VIPs, we
stood in. I in line to pay for my breakfast. She unnoticed
behind me until she spoke. She greeted me. She asked if I
spoke English. We exchanged a handful of pleasantries. I
paid my check and turned to leave. She gave to me the
momentito sign with her thumb and forefinger. We met outside
on the sidewalk, away from the restaurant crowd.

"I am trying to learn English," she began. "I study it
much but I never have a chance to practice, you see."

Traffic briskly passed us on that shortcut between
Insurgentes and La Reforma. A man shifted behind her buying
a newspaper. The newsstand was awkwardly placed.

"I know the feeling," I replied. "I have struggled with
this same problem in my studies of Spanish."

A gloss of conversation then. She was obviously trying
to practice English. I had work to do, however, along
Insurgentes. I offered, "If you want we can meet later this
afternoon and converse for awhile. You can practice more
English this way. Would you like to meet later?"

She would indeed.

We arranged a meeting place.

I shook her hand. I asked her name.

Maria was her name.

I noted the crucifix hanging from the chain around
Maria's neck.

En route this morning to the Mexico City bus terminal I
witnessed well-dressed tired-eyed Mexicans running through a
metro correspondencia. Running. Running Mexicans at 6:30
a.m. Now I observe two Querétaro girls saunter through a
colonial pedestrian lane. In their plaid skirts they
saunter, comfortably they do, in the warm sun. The leather
of an old woman's shoes squeaks as she treads by. And a
shopkeeper sets out his signboard. Examenes de la vista, it
adverts. And birdsong. After two weeks of Mexico City the
elation I feel here in this tranquil spot, the relief I feel
here in this tranquil spot might well be described as
indescribable. Impeccable, Querétaro is--quiet. I've
visited this city more than any other. My favorite. I can
stroll this small picturesque centro in an hour or so, plaza
by plaza, anticipating this statue, that fountain, this
church, that way. A woman just greeted another woman lolling
on this lane. They greeted one another familiarly. And
earlier, on a busier street, I saw a man turn to greet
someone in a doorway. Then he pivoted toward a second person
who called to him from a sputtering truck. Then he
acknowledged the raised hand of a third man across the busy
street. That third man loped over the busy street then with
a warm eagerness. The two men shook hands warmly. This is
not Mexico City.

Maria stepped around the corner of Rio Mixcoac and San
Angel with a deliberate clip to her stride. I was resting in
the shade of a tall bank building, on its marble steps. I
recognized her instantly, her smart black jacket over her
fine white blouse, her fine white blouse tucked into her
closely checkered black and white skirt, her skirt falling to
just past her knees. She wore black hose, too, and expensive
shoes. I stood. We shook hands.

"Do you want that we go to my house?" she panted quickly
in Spanish.

And, "Sí. Está bien," I responded.

This was not what I had envisioned, but I trusted Maria.
She seemed genuine beneath her edgy professionalism,
vulnerable. One never suspects the vulnerable.

"We'll take a taxi," she declared.

Momentarily she perched on the curb then, lifting her
arm. Aboard, we climbed, tumbling onto the backseat of the
green and white Volkswagen, gripping at the armrests as it
jerked into traffic.

"And so how was your business," I asked.

"Bien, bien."

She showed to me a brochure. The brochure was for a
liquor company based in Morelos. The liquor company had just
offered her a job as salesperson.

"And for you," she asked then. "And how was for you your
work."

I told her it had gone swimmingly, that I had finished
much earlier than expected. We attempted more small talk
then. The roar of the street, however, made it impossible
for me to follow her Spanish. We sat wordlessly, thus,
uneasily, for most of the drive.

The taxi lurched onto a gated driveway. Maria waved at
a uniformed man. The gate opened. Maria paid the expensive
cab fare. Then she led me up a flight of steps. Then she
rolled a long key in a dead bolt. Maria's apartment was
small but comfortable. As soon as Maria entered it her edgy
professionalism eased, her vulnerability broadened. I noticed
this. I drifted to the window. The view was expansive--the
city, the mountains.

A young man with longish hair stops before this cafe
now, mid-stride, and chuckles. He beholds a great Hispanic
beauty reposed within it, a true Dulcinea. The Dulcinea
recognizes the young man. She chuckles in her turn. Her
hand rises unconsciously to her bare and elegant neck. They
smile. The young man greets an old man who idles with the
Dulcinea. Respectfully he greets the old man. Then, in a
friendly way, he invites the Dulcinea to accompany him to a
French movie showing Sunday. For some reason the Dulcinea
cannot accompany him. The Dulcinea invites the young man to
telephone her, however. He agrees. The young man shakes the
hand of the old man then. And then the young man departs.
The old man makes some parting remarks of his own then. Then
he stands. Then he kisses the cheek of the Dulcinea. Then he
departs.

A bell chimes in the distance.

A beggar sits resting to my left.

Maria invited me into her apartment. Maria took me into
her apartment. Maria conversed with me alone in her apartment
on her sofa. Were I a Mexican man I would interpret this
unmistakably as an invitation to sex. But I am not a Mexican
man. Maria knew this--that I was not a Mexican man. Not
every approach is an overture.

Maria offered a tequila. I declined.

Maria offered a beer. I accepted.

As she sought and opened the bottle of beer in the
kitchen I heard her quietly utter something about trusting
people, about how difficult it is to find people to trust.
She placed the beer on the coffee table before me. She
plumped down near me on her plush sofa. Maria leaned over
the English book open in my lap. Maria stroked the pages as
she leafed them, as we talked haltingly, in Spanish. My
right leg twitched under the pages Maria stroked. My pulse
excited. I looked to her.

A desperation sharpened Maria's look.

A sadness heavied Maria's look.

Maria said, "Mexican girls are raised from childhood to
look for and believe in meeting one man and marrying him and
being with him forever. It is a beautiful idea. My parents
did it. I remember them fighting over him going with this
girl once; over him going with that girl. But always my
mother stayed with him. When he died they were still
together. It makes it very difficult--It is very hard to
accept it when it does not work out for some reason--If you
do not stay together. It feels like failure."

I asked if she were married.

"More or less," she said. "We do not have a good
relationship."

Neither of us were paying attention to the English book.
It was now just a prop. I closed it. I lay it on the coffee
table. I took the bottle of beer. I leaned back into the
sofa. I did not drink from the bottle of beer.

"I had a good job in Morelia," Maria continued. "I was
a buyer for a large department store. I had my little career.
I was very happy. He convinced me to come here. We came.
With our daughter. She is in school here and she likes it.
She wants to be a lawyer. She wants to stay now. It's very
hard because we women are raised for one man. But the men,
they change."

Here Maria's eyes welled with tears. She did not,
however, let them fall.

"The men, they see someone in the street and they want
to go with them and suddenly they leave you. It is very
difficult."

The tears receded. Maria was flushed.

"He supports us economically."

Maria glanced away.

I looked at her. She struck me suddenly as pretty.

The stones of this lane bask in the sunshine. Still the
sounds of happily chatting girls linger. And the crooning of
a famous balladeer mists from the cafe's open doorway. Only
my round sidewalk table is occupied now. In another hour or
so I will seek a menu of the day at some restaurant nearby.
Earlier I ambled by a favorite restaurant of mine from a
previous trip. I dined in that restaurant with Sandra once.
She was beautiful in that restaurant. It is now a cake shop.
I will find another restaurant. Many purple flowers deck
this walk. And antique lamps. And before I seated myself
here I saw a yellow and black butterfly as big as my open
hand flutter unnoticed between a pair of businessmen and a
pair of lovers.

Topics changed and changed again as we conversed.
Finally, I mentioned my rash.

"Yes, I saw it," Maria said.

"I'm allergic, I think, to my laundry detergent. I have
this cream for the itching. It does not really work." From
the bag at my feet I pulled my ointment.

Maria took the tube of ointment from me. She studied the
label. Maria rose abruptly then to disappear into the
bathroom. She returned with a second tube, a white tube.
She told me it was hydrocortisone. She told me it would
help.

She asked, "How often do you wash?"

"Every night, but I only have four changes of clothes on
this trip."

"It's too bad that we met this late. I could have helped
you. I could have washed your clothes for you."

I looked at Maria intently. I said nothing.

"Do you want that I put this ointment on your hands for
you?"

Very slowly, I nodded.

And very slowly Maria began to very gently dab the white
lenitive onto the red circular spots that covered my hands
and wrists. She was very gentle in the act, nurturing.
"Thank you," I finally murmured.

And followed then a long silence.

Another topic arose, changed, and changed again.

I found myself explaining suddenly how I have decided
not to seek an intimate until I settle down. How I think all
the traveling and moving about will make the settling and
companionship just that much sweeter. I found myself telling
Maria how I have no intimate in my life, how lonely I feel
sometimes because of it, but how loneliness is the only price
I pay for my lifestyle, my only cross to bear.

"Solito," was the word I used for lonely.

"Solita," Maria repeated back to me. She gave the word
the feminine form when she repeated it back to me. "We are
very much alike," she said.

And Maria's lips moved to speak again. But I moved and
stopped Maria's lips. I kissed her.

Twice in Mexico City I had students of English approach
and interview me for their classes. Where are you from? they
ask. What Mexican food do you like? They ask. Have you
visited Garibaldi square? Basic stuff. The first was a timid
young man with short wavy hair outside the anthropological
museum. I was munching carrots, lunching on a big rock,
pondering the long line to the old master's exhibit. He had a
list of questions. He penciled in what he understood of my
replies. The second was a group of five students. They
converged on me in the Zócalo with a tape recorder. I
understood them all quite well except for the girl who
questioned me last. She kept asking if I had a mascot. Do
you have a mascot? What? Do you have a mascot? What?
Finally I remembered that the word for "pet" in Spanish is
"mascota." Oh! said I. Do I have a pet? No. No, I do not
have a pet. But my sister has a dog named Rumpus.

"To my bed," Maria said.

Maria said, "Let me lock the door."

Then, we kissing, embracing in the middle of the living
room,

"I have to ask," Maria asked. "Do you want to use
prevention?"

I had never heard a condom called "prevention."

Maria repeated her question.

Still I did not understand.

"A condom," Maria stated then shortly.

"Yes," I answered. "Of course." But I did not have a
condom. But Maria had a condom. And I was sitting on her bed
then watching her undress herself impatiently. And she was
impatiently then helping me undress myself.

Little foreplay. Our foreplay had been our dithering on
the sofa, our waiting for me to act.

"What a surprise," I said.

"Faster, faster," she commanded.

"I have to go slowly," I said. "It's been over a year
for me."

I asked, "Did you have this in mind from the beginning?"

"From the moment you entered the restaurant."

She said, "How you enchant me!"

"How pretty you are," I said.

"Yes?"

"Yes!"

"How old are you," I asked, to watch Maria's eyes
suddenly panic, to call myself silently an ass.

"Guess."

"How old are you?" I asked again.

"Guess."

I guessed the oldest Maria might be and subtracted five
years.

"Thirty-five," I said.

"Thirty-six," she answered, grinning, her eyes rolling
back in her head.

"Have you done this with many men?"

"I've never brought someone here with me."

"Do you want me to come?"

"Not yet. I want to feel you still."

"I'm going to come."

"Ven! Ven!"

It was not until afterward that she understood I was
leaving at six o'clock this morning. When I told her six in
our conversations, she thought I meant six o'clock this
evening. She expected us to spend today together.

"I want to be with you," she said.

"For this reason I avoid these situations," I answered.
"Because I am always leaving." And I could see now that
fierce desperation in her eyes.

Maria was a lonely woman. By her own confession Maria
felt abandoned, a failure. And this, you know, is the source
of my prick of doubt, of that haunting ambiguity, of my
plaguing question. Did I make it worse for her? Maria was
suffering. For those few torrid minutes with me Maria was
not suffering. But was that ephemeral relief a good thing?
Did that encounter soothe Maria or only heighten her
subsequent pain? The look in Maria's eyes when I left her
alone at the metro station was not a content one. It was a
desperate one. A look just as desperate as when she spoke to
me of her sorrows. Maria needed more than an amorous
encounter, I think. Maria needed a paramour, a lover, or,
her husband. I don't know. I meant no harm. I think
probably the only thing worse though than sleeping with Maria
would have been not to sleep with Maria.

Three French-speaking people just took a table inside
this cafe. They ordered cappuccinos. I am sitting "a soleil"
if I understood the man correctly. If I leave the cafe now
and wander a bit through the plazas it should be just time
for the afternoon meal. My hotel is nice. My room is quietly
off the street. My windows open onto the hotel's
bougainvillea draped courtyard. Spanish-Moorish arches frame
the courtyard. Red flowers dangle in it from hanging pots.
This is the most I have yet paid for lodgings. Still it is
less than I budgeted. Tomorrow I work, I guess.